{"id":104317,"date":"2016-11-10T12:18:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T17:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=104317"},"modified":"2016-11-10T12:18:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T17:18:09","slug":"joseph-conrad-heart-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/10\/joseph-conrad-heart-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matteo Pericoli is the founder of the\u00a0Laboratory of Literary Architecture<\/a>,\u00a0an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture<\/a>,\u00a0designing and building stories\u00a0as architectural projects. In this series<\/a>, he\u00a0shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they\u2019re modeled on.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"birds_eye_view\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The skyscraper looming above us is composed of a clean, well-defined volume and a formless, organic, irregular mass that seems to be enveloping the volume while supporting it and, at the same time, oozing from it like a leak from a crack. The shape of the central, glass and steel building is that of an upside-down truncated square pyramid\u2014tall and slender, bright and reflective like a spear stuck into the ground. The accretion is geometrically fluid, opaque, made of wood and with few openings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Between us and Marlow, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad\u2019s novel Heart of Darkness<\/i><\/a>, there is a certain distance. His trip to Africa, told in the first person, is reported by an anonymous narrator through almost entirely quoted speech, like the transcription of an interview. The voice we hear <\/i>while reading doesn\u2019t originate within our mind, it\u2019s just in front of us.<\/p>\n

This detachment puts the reader in a safe place; we listen to Marlow already knowing that he survives the journey. During the narration, like a virus, a series of doubts insinuates itself into the reader, in a crescendo of mostly-unmet expectations. As soon as Kurtz\u2019s name is uttered, a sense of unease begins\u2014like an efflorescence seeping from the story\u2019s fissures. Who is Kurtz? Why is he so \u201cremarkable\u201d? What happened in the jungle? What did he write in his infamous report? Why is he adored like a god?<\/p>\n

\"elevationplan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The building exudes Kurtz\u2014it exudes darkness and fog, horror and woodiness. But it\u2019s a superficial effect. In the end we neither understand nor discover anything. Once inside the skyscraper, we realize that at its core is a disturbing courtyard\u2014unreachable, unvisitable and with no geometric connection to its hosting volume. It exists, but we don\u2019t know why and what it is for. More than a powerful presence, we realize that Kurtz is both a narrative and structural absence that cannot be filled, a cavity that erodes the story. On the one hand, we know (or, perhaps, hope) that when Marlow finally meets him, everything will be clear\u2014the narration, the narrator, the context, the journey, Kurtz\u2019s exceptional nature; and that we, too, will be an integral part of the story. On the other hand, we have a feeling (or, perhaps, fear) that it will never happen.<\/p>\n

The nonexistent vertex of the tall, narrow upside-down pyramid lies deep below the ground, below the building\u2019s foundation, unreachable and, like Marlow\u2019s final lie, incomprehensible.<\/p>\n

In collaboration with Giuseppe Franco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matteo Pericoli is the founder of the\u00a0Laboratory of Literary Architecture,\u00a0an interdisciplinary project that looks at fiction through the lens of architecture,\u00a0designing and building stories\u00a0as architectural projects. In this series, he\u00a0shares some of his designs and what they reveal about the stories they\u2019re modeled on. The skyscraper looming above us is composed of a clean, well-defined […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22546],"tags":[21331,14359,12976,4720,2861,7003,25459,15329,22550,452,13134],"class_list":["post-104317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-architecture","tag-blueprints","tag-buildings","tag-drawings","tag-heart-of-darkness","tag-history","tag-joseph-conrad","tag-kurtz","tag-laboratory-of-literary-architecture","tag-literary-architecture","tag-matteo-pericoli","tag-sketches"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nImagining \u201cHeart of Darkness\u201d As a Building<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Matteo Pericoli\u2019s Literary Architecture series looks at fiction through the lens of architecture, designing and building stories as architectural 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